Is it a cheap tactic to throw an unkillable foe at the PCs (like a Tarrasque) if they're derailing the campaign too much and need to be nudged in the right direction and/or taken down a few pegs when they get too powerful?
>>46781334
>PCs are getting too powerful
>let's force a TPK!
>Is there a problem with this idea?
Yeah, I think it might just be a problem there.
More seriously, players going Monty Haul or derailing a campaign can be tricky to deal with and different solutions would need to solve different situations. Monty Haul is usually best solved by explaining to the players that they're wrecking everything with their items, and either agree to a situation where they lose the power items (perhaps allowing the DM to sneak in and steal them from the characters) or just escalating things of the players like a power spiral. Derailing the campaign gets solved by either not putting the campaign on rails to begin with, figuring out how NPCs respond to the derailment, having the BBEG continue with their plans anyways, or just letting the players know that you don't have content for digging up a swamp on-hand and would prefer they try out the dungeon you had prepped this week.
>>46781334
Depends how are you using it?
Using it to say yo you probably don't want to keep going left a bunch of now homeless beggars/refugees just said the scariest mythical creature ever just fucking ate our town and is now eating everything in the area. Then if they are dumb enough to attack it it's their own fault, other wise they head right on the right path again.
>>46781334
How are they derailing the campaign?
If the only way you have to keep players "on track" (whatever that means) is by lining the "track" with unkillable kaiju it might mean that your game sucks.
>>46783803
The answer to this question is key
>>46781844
>Players going Monty Haul.
Monty Haul is always the DM's fault, without exception.
>>46784095
This is always true, but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem that the DM then needs to deal with somehow.
>>46784129
Magic is mercurial. Contrive whatever bullshit you want. Tolkien effectively took the Ring of Invisibility away by suddenly making it attract murderghosts.
>>46781334
>playing D&D
>being an adversarial GM
>being a railroading GM
>being a bad GM
I SERIOUSLY hope you guys don't do this.
>>46784283
What's wrong with D&D?
>>46784633
Don't reply to trolls.
>>46784633
Nothing if it's flaws are realized and Players don't purposefully try to break the system, since it's so easy. Many people on here forget that TTRPG's shouldn't always be treated as a miniatures based tactics game with RP'ing on the side, but systems that provide the malleable backbone to collaborative story telling
Could send some rust monsters to level the playing field
Posing an encounter that clearly isn't meant to be solved by rolling until it has 0 hp can be alright, as long as there are ways to resolve the encounter.
If they don't understand this when fetching bread from the baker for the cobbler, they won't when they raise their shield to gojira's bunyuns.
>>46781334
I once dropped my player a tarrasque but I did it as part of their main quest.
>the kingdom was built on the foundation of fear after the first King controlled a tarrasque.
>players are trying to figure out if it's true
>revealed the tarrasque just happened to eat it's way through the enemy kingdom.
>players think it's awesome, decide to go find a tarrasque and have it repeat history
>they find a living tarrasque according to legend is sleeping under the city.
>tell the king
>oh the unimaginable perils. The horrors...
>new quest, fix the tarrasque problem.
Lvl 30 players, roughly 10million gold.
This is our characters final Campaign. We wanted to retire happy.
We are self aware too strong, we wanted the final challenge.
>>46784805
I second this.
>lol we are so good at this, you can't kill us. Lol jk but really.
(Dusts off monster manual, flips to tabbed page)
I thought it would never come to this.
>you see the entrance to the treasure room, unguarded.
Check for traps. None you can identify
I walk forward,...nothing
We also enter the room.
Gotcha now bitches
>door slams shut. Walls reveal themselves as mimics, ceiling collapses, yet another mimic, floor mimic, chest mimic, filled with rust monsters.
>And finally, a colossal ooze fills the entire room.
Goodbye party members
>>46784865
Awaken the Terrasque and give it levels in Wizard. Make them work for their legends.
>>46781334
>Is it a good idea to railroad?
No. If they don't want to follow your quest then don't force them, but remind them that the world keeps moving even when they're not there.
>>46784988
Depends on game. If the party had agreed in advance to play a game about aristocrats dealing with thrown succession but end up playing as murder hobos it would be good to ask pkayers if they want yo play it or not. It takes months to prepare a campaign setting and nothing makes GMing more annoying than having players request specific type of campaign and then let it burn. 5 hours of spare time at weekends is luxury most adults working on two jobs simply dont have that often.
>>46784978
Unleash a herd of Saguaroi on them if they survive somehow
>>46784978
You remind me of a friend I had in NNPTU, who unleashed upon his Good-Aligned party an Awakened Rust Monster Paladin who wanted hugs, with an affectionate Gelatinous Cube mount.
>>46784747
>collaborative storytelling
The best RP stories in my experience are emergent, and I think that as a role playing GAME, a primary objective should be challenging the players to engage them.
>tactics game with RPing on the side
Must I bring out the reaction charts?
I have to do something similar quite regularly because the players are pissing about and deliberately trying to annoy me (something they admit) instead of following up on one of their quests/jobs. I never use unbeatable npc's/enemies for it, but they tend to be enough to get them to stop buggering about.
>"Oh, you've decided to waste ten minutes of the game by whining at a random npc because she doesn't have the thing you want and even if she did she wouldn't give it to you and you bloody well know it? Well, here's a large, angry guy with a battleaxe who's ordering you to piss off and leave her alone."
The only thing is they sometimes try to call my bluff, and then figure out I wasn't bluffing because the angry npc(s) end up dealing them a fair whack of damage before they get the hint and stop acting like morons (for a while).
>>46781334
I think the usual expirience that they will get themselves killed.
At the beginning of my campaign I put my players aganist a Spectral Kraken (A cool name for a Giant Squid with traslucent skin) during a storm to force them to shipwreck and arrive on the island where the adventure will be.
At Lv 1, the encounter was impossible to beat, so all the players started to strategize and I made them fight aganist the tentacles of the creature, giving them little victories before the inevitable shipwreck.
All the players enjoyed it, except for the wizard who died after he jumped in the beak of the Kraken with a knife in his mouth saying "We are only lv 1, OP will never put us aganist something we can't kill!"
Railroading a bit is okay, because you can use it to build up the exciment and keep the players interested (like in a rollercoaster), just don't overdue it.
>>46787893
>> OP will never
Sorry, I meant GM
>>46787893
>he jumped in the beak of the Kraken with a knife in his mouth saying "We are only lv 1, OP will never put us aganist something we can't kill!"
that is hilarious.
>>46788196
Yes, he was hoping to use my Rad-Dice rule, which is granted after a group votation.
If you do something cool in my game, the group votes and if they all agree, I give you an extra dice to roll and let you choose the better result while the others are chanting "RAD DICE RAD DICE".
Unfortunatly, the others thought it was a stupid idea. Maybe it had something to do with his "liberal" use of Burning hands on aganist the tentacles, hurting sailors and party members alike.
>>46781982
That sounds dangerously close to a plot hook. How would players know
>>46790090
>That sounds dangerously close to a plot hook.
Well, yes. Obviously the players will realize what it is and give it a wide berth as they pursue their nefarious agenda of derailing the game.
>>46781334
If you feel like you need to grab the PC's by the ear and drag them back to your "plotline" or whatever, just go write fantasy fiction and/or kill yourself.
Your job is to present the players with interesting situations and the consequences of their actions, it's not to trick them into thinking they matter even though you've decided 2 sessions in advance what's "supposed" to happen.
If you come into conflict with your players because they play their characters you're probably better off as a player than a GM.
Throwing challenges at them designed to force them to change their behavior is basically the GM version of player disagreements spilling over into character disagreements. You're changing the setting and the challenges just because they're not playing the game the way you think they should.
>>46781334
I don't think TPK is going to rerail the party, since they're dead and the new monster is a more immediate threat.
>>46781334
>derailing
Stop running games forever.
